


Once and Future

by FinnreyTropes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant as in I'm ignoring that awful kiss, Ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinnreyTropes/pseuds/FinnreyTropes
Summary: Finn notices that Rey's attention seems to be wandering during their vacation. For the Finnrey Fic blog's World Oceans Day theme for June.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 23
Collections: Finnrey Fanfic Connection





	Once and Future

Finn decided on the second day that he liked Rellet after all.

He felt he could be excused for not having fallen in love with the resort planet at first sight. To begin with, the transport had been a little rough. Rey was an excellent traveler, and even she’d been a little queasy with the lurching in and out of hyperspace that the taciturn Mon Cal pilot had done with hardly any apology except “We’re behind schedule. On behalf of Cala Transports, we regret the delay. No refunds.”

 _Then_ they’d finally gotten to the oceanic planet that was one big chain of interconnected islands and found that their luggage had been deposited at another resort halfway across the planet. It was a little better when they’d been able to check into their very nicely appointed room with a view of the beach and the purple-blue ocean that had given Rellet its name (in ancient Corellian), but Finn was still tired, sore, and not in the mood to notice the attractions. Rey and Finn had collapsed in the sleep pod built for two and had awoken to their luggage safe and sound and inside their room and a platter of delicious food, complements of the house.

Still, Finn had not come around to actually _liking_ Rellet until the next morning, when he and Rey were on the beach in their designated “biosphere” – a circular area that was blocked off by forcefields, keeping out pests and the occasional flying object. Each sphere was set to the replicate the ideal temperature based on the biorhythms of the inhabitants. One could even activate a forcefield of sorts to screen out the sun with the touch of a button. Inside the invisible bubble, Finn found that he could breathe easier and actually enjoy the crest and crash of the purplish waves and the clusters of red minerals that bobbed on the surface of the water, glowing like jewels.

Finn turned to Rey, poised to ask if she wanted to step out of their sphere and explore the water. Her attention was elsewhere, however, and she appeared engrossed in whatever it was she was watching.

Following her line of sight, Finn raised a brow.

She was gazing in the direction of two young children – Finn estimated them to be about 6 or 7 standard years – sitting on a blanket a few biospheres away. One of the children was a Mirialan boy whose dark hair was combed severely back from an unadorned face, his green skin glowing in the sunlight. The other child was a lavender-hued Twi’lek girl with what Finn guessed was some sort of covering to guard against the sun’s rays wound around her lekku. She was showing the little boy something on a portable holopad, pointing to things on the screen. The boy’s forehead was webbed in concentration, but suddenly it lightened. He smiled and pointed to something and the girl grinned, her fingers flying over the surface of the screen.

Finn supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised, since those two had drawn Rey’s attention almost from the time they’d sat down in their sphere. He just wasn’t sure _why_ – there were beings of all species surrounding them and plenty of young children around. In fact, a group of Hapan youths had stumbled into their forcefield and bounced off, waving an apology with their long fingers, and Rey had barely taken notice. Yet she seemed captivated by the young Mirialan and Twi’lek nearby.

“Hungry?”

Rey jumped and made a startled noise, turning toward him with wide eyes.

“What?”

“They’re looking at the sphere-side snacks menu.” Finn nodded toward the children. “I thought maybe you might want to have something delivered here. Or do you want to go to the restaurant?”

“No ... I ...” She shook her head slowly. “I-I’m not. I just ...”

Her words trailed off. A silver serving droid was now approaching the young pair with a Cloud Pop in each hand. Rellet’s “Cloud Pops” were the “official” snack of the resort planet. Large, fluffy confections the size of a Wookie’s head, they coalesced into a delicious sweet, frozen cream when bitten into. 

The droid handed each child a treat and they eagerly tucked in, their faces obscured behind the puffy dessert.

“Rey?” Finn was starting to get a little concerned. “You’ve been paying a lot of attention to those kids. Are you afraid they’re here by themselves? I think that nanny droid on the other side of their sphere might be with the little girl’s family –”

“No. It’s not that.” Rey took a breath. “I think I was just wondering ... what if those kids were us?”

Finn frowned thoughtfully. He looked at the children again. They were still eating their snack, but they were talking to each other excitedly in between bites.

“I mean ... what if we were them? Or _could_ have been them?” She was speaking in a rush. “What if we’d been able to come to a place like this when we were their age with our families? What if we’d met each other here and become friends and played every day on the beach and shared snacks and talked ... and maybe decided to keep in touch over private holo and hopefully see each other again during the next holiday?”

Rey let her breath out slowly. “What if we could have been _them_ ... not conscripted into a murder regime or left alone on a desert planet. But then, we’d be different people, wouldn’t we?”

Finn was stunned. He’d never heard Rey talk this way, and in the back of his mind, he wondered if he’d made a mistake on suggesting Rellet as a vacation destination, given its reputation for being a family-friendly place. He hadn’t thought about it in that way, however. Rey had expressed a desire to see a sea and Finn, despite his dislike of sand, had been curious, too, though his time as a Stormtrooper had taken him to oceanic planets before.

Rey was looking expectantly at him, and he felt as if he should say _something_.

“We _would_ be different people if we’d had a childhood like theirs.” He paused. “But that’s not necessarily a good thing. Or a bad thing. It just would have been different. Just like it would have been different for _them_ growing up under the First Order.”

She looked over the children again and then back at Finn.

“... That’s true.”

“And, don't forget that _we_ have a lot to do with why they’ll never know what that’s like. The Resistance. Everybody who ever fought against the First Order. That's why a place like this can exist.”

She smiled at him. “I know. I was thinking that, too. They get to be kids. Just _kids_. I’m happy for them.”

Finn squeezed her hand. Sometimes it was hard for him to believe that it had been almost five years since the last vestiges of the First Order had been eradicated after the strike on Exegol. Two years since he and Rey had officially left the Resistance, married, and settled on a small planet in the Outer Rim on the Rimma trade route. Everything, from his escape with Poe Dameron to meeting Rey on Jakku – all the way up to the final First Order adherents being rounded up and thrown into prison on Eriadu – seemed like it happened only a week or so earlier. Finn didn’t know if that was a function of getting old(er) or of being completely happy in one’s life. Maybe it was a combination of both.

Rey snuggled against his shoulder. “I’d like us to come here, as a family, every year. I think it would be nice. I really like the water. And the food.” She kissed his shoulder. “ _And_ the company.”

“Sounds good to me.” Finn kissed her forehead. “We’ve gotta get started on that _family_ part soon, though.”

“Hmm.” Rey sounded amused. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Finn looked confused. “Maybe what?”

“ _Maybe_ we don’t have to _get_ started.” Rey’s eyes were sparkling. “ _Maybe_ we’ve gotten a start on that already.”

Finn couldn’t tell what his face was doing, but Rey’s soft laugh made the fluttering in his stomach increase.

“Wait, do you mean ...?”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft, her eyes glowing. “That's what I mean. I was going to surprise you with the news at dinner tonight, but no time like the present, I suppose. I’m almost two months along.”

Finn fell back onto his chair, dazed.

“We’re .... gonna be parents?” He could barely hear his own voice above the pounding of his heart. "This is happening?"

"It's happening." Her hand slipped into his. "Next time we come here, we'll be able to rent one of the family spheres with the floating changing tables and the on-call diaper service."

Finn was on his back, staring muzzily up at a pink sky. A father. He was going to be a _father_. During his time in the First Order, and even his years in the Resistance, he'd never stopped to wonder what his life would be like at nearly 30 years old, but the knowledge that he and Rey were going to have a child left him breathless.

“I’ve been looking at holos that detail the pregnancies of Force sensitives," Rey was saying. "They say that there’s a bond that forms in utero almost immediately, and that's absolutely true. I can feel them already.”

His head whipped toward Rey at her words.

“Uh ... _them_? As in _more than one_?”

Rey laughed and picked up the menu pad from the side of her chair.

“You know what? Those kids have the right idea. Cloud Pops all around!”

**Author's Note:**

> So ... it's me. Been awhile, I know. In all honesty, after The Rise of Skywalker, I really lost my taste for fandom. Finn and Rey are great characters and they deserved so much better than the idiocy that they got. I can't even fathom the actions Rey took in that movie and her lack of regard for Finn's feelings. That said, I have been heartened by the fics written by my fellow Finnrey fans and the Finnrey Fics blog had a prompt I couldn't resist. I can't promise I'll be moved to write more Finnrey, but I am going to try. The Finn and Rey that existed in The Force Awakens deserve the world.


End file.
